Wheat  

1 

It doesn't bother me any more to admit that I'm old. There was a time when I wouldn't admit it at all. Later, I tried the strategy of admitting it openly, exaggerating, declaring my senility and fragility with a matter-of-factness that came off sounding like good-natured self parody. Now there's not any point to such conceited defenses. All right then. I'm old, and that isn't a dramatic or even very relevant statement, any more than saying there's a bit of gunk in the corner of my eye. It is neither impressive nor depressing. It's simply a trivial truth.

You would expect, then, that traveling would be unappealing to one of my age. The fatigue, the physical stress, the alienation of arriving in new environs, dipping in then out again. Well, no. I tell you, traveling is much more of a compulsion now that I'm old. Of course it is tedious. My back gets stiff and my arms and toes go numb. This happens even more notably, though, when I'm at home, sitting ever so safely with my feet in a plastic tub of salts and my head in a mystery novel. Risk free is more deadly, I can tell you, more immediately frightening and dangerous, than a white-knuckle ride in a bus on the side of a mountain in the Philippines, or nauseously ricocheting between air pockets over the Andes. 

This kind of tedium is not romantic or adventuresome, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it frees me or invigorates me making me feel "young again." Drivel. Hell, it is terrifying, and the panic that arises is not an even vaguely appreciated "rush" sensation. It's as disturbing as being car sick or sea sick or horribly annoyed in any situation or at any age. But there's one thing that it is not. It is not inert. 

Inertia is the only less acceptable form of torture to the ardures of travel. It has nothing to do with souvenirs or do-it-before-it's-too-late notions. It's simply much more horrible a feeling to face myself breathing my last gulps of existence in the act of doing absolutely not a god damned thing at all. I cannot live with myself merely waiting, listening to my farts and, due to a vacancy of mind, formulating worries over my colon. Instead then, let me assume that my colon is a mess, my liver is cancerous, my prostate is on the verge of rupture, my arteries are clogged, my brain is about to hemorrhage, and very soon I'll be dead or stricken with aphasia or incontinent or paralyzed or in cardiac arrest.

This is enough inspiration for me. It triggers compulsive escape, a rickety voice shrieks "Go! Good God get me out of here!" not out of anything sweet or demure or quaint or endearing or carefree but out of a neurotic terror and my stubborn refusal to aim towards anything remotely akin to wisdom. 

I flee. I don't fool myself about it. I don't enjoy myself particularly. I don't play games pretending I'm cute and spunky, flirting with sexy uniformed girls who make comments about how I'm such-and-such "for my age." Shit. I'm simply doing the only thing I know how to do--moving, staying on the move, filling my time with movement from one Where? to another Where? until I'm exhausted and have to sleep and mechanically recuperate, and then when I'm rested get my ass on the move again. Absolutely true: I am a person with no rationale besides this futile drive to distract myself from the dullness and absurdity of inertia. I hate television.  So I fly. I don't look for meaning any more. I just look for a reasonable deal on a ticket. 

Traveling has changed over the years, of course. It no longer involves much more than a few telephone calls and getting one's body at a particular place on time, and beyond that it's automatic pilot. These package deals are for morons, designed and operated by morons. I find it ridiculously easy to travel with morons. It is boring, leading to nowhere of interest, and yet it carries me along, onto buses and into queues and out of planes and into upper train berths, surrounded by cackling idiots who take their big round orange nametags seriously somehow. I tend not to be a gabber, and quickly enough people learn to leave me alone.

I ignore everything that dribbles out of the face of a phony, cheery guide or group leader and stare out of whatever window there is to stare out of. No matter how witty or educational these jackasses market themselves to be, I long ago discovered there's nothing to learn from them or be amused by. Education I can get on my own: simply open your eyes and suspend for a moment your imagination. What's left is real, and sometimes of fleeting interest. Amusement, well, that's a tired sport. Conscious attempts at wit are inevitably transparent and contrived. Amusement is simply something that flickers into life unexpectedly once in a very long while. Rather like an erection. Occasionally, much to my surprise, I see that it's happened. Soon enough it passes and has instantly slipped out of mind.

I always get private rooms and take long toilet breaks…I suppose that is where my pleasure lies. There is nothing like the deep sense of satisfaction I get out of extended visits to the john. It's a wonderful solitude and freedom. It makes me feel like some sort of renegade. It's something I've always enjoyed, but since being old even more so. Sex never was the radical indulgence that my bowel movements are for me now. Or even just pretending to have bowel movements. It honestly gives me joy.  It is perhaps the only thing left that does give me this kind of childish, playing-with-a-ducky-in-the-bathtub joy. Madness! 

I have decided that on my next trip aboard a helicopter, I'm going to push something or somebody out. I don't care what. A fucking danish.  A newspaper. A pen. A retired businessman. The pilot. It's come to that. I've only been aboard one of those ridiculous machines two, maybe three times. Maybe I never will again. I'm certainly not planning it. But one never knows. It could well turn out that way.   

2 

In 1981, Thomas Sullivan swallowed a sleeping pill. It had no effect whatsoever, and so he took off his pajamas, pulled on his navy-blue socks, and left his apartment. It was still early, about 8:15 p.m. The hallway was empty, although he could hear the barely muffled noises of activities from behind his neighbors' doors: children squabbling over tv, conversations, clanging of dishes being washed. He walked to the end of the hall and opened the door to the fire escape. He stood outside in the sticky summer evening air, his hairy belly greatly humbling his shriveled little penis, with only his feet concealed in clothing. The alley below was well-lit, but there wasn't any traffic there. "Here I am standing naked," he mused to himself, "and it hasn't changed a thing. Surprise, surprise, the world keeps rolling." 

He took off his socks and went back to bed. It took a long while, but finally he slept. 

3 

Howling like wolverines, the children are eating handfuls of mud outside. I hate that. I can never understand why parents would allow such a racket.

I have no children of my own. Instead, I have a hobby of baking plaster figurines. It's rather enjoyable. Some batches I allow to explode. Others I merely warm, then remove from the kiln and hurl against the wall. If they are wet with glaze, they often leave faint stains which, frankly, tickle me.

Today I dipped some old wristwatches in a batter and deep-fried them. The recipe is for apple fritters. It was fine, though, for the watches. Make a note.

If the children are bestial, I suppose that it's only fair to admit the role of their environment. Hypothetically, if I were chained to a heavy piece of machinery, left out of doors in the elements, fed very infrequently and spoken to only by a woman who is invariably harsh, I would probably be disrespectful of the neighbors, too. Not that I'm blaming the parents. Far from it. I feel they're spoiling the monsters. They should unchain them and let them fend for themselves, and then see how they'd be howling! No, parents certainly have the right to do as they please--or hire nannies to do as they please--with unholy offspring. But it would be more thoughtful if they did it out in the country. Complexes such as ours are just not appropriate for raising young families these days. The city is not a place for screaming, wretched beasts.

It's interesting to note that they haven't learned to develop a language among themselves yet. They aren't infants any more, after all. All they do is yelp and babble. I suppose soon enough they'll be starting to fornicate. Now that will be interesting! I'm almost looking forward to it. It certainly would be no worse than this ongoing ruckus. 

I'm preparing a rather ambitious project. Something I've never really attempted on this scale. I've been collecting odd pieces of discarded clothing accessories for several months. Zipper-tabs, buttons, eyelets, velcro straps and the lot. I'm starting to arrange them according to weight, and it has been fascinating. I've occasionally been outwitted! To my great surprise and delight, for instance, I discovered that a tie clip weighs less than your average belt-loop! At any rate, once the categorizations are complete, I'm going to pour a thin sidewalk outside the kitchen door, no more than a quarter of an inch, quite smooth and uniform. Of course I'll pelt it, once it's half set, with my various objects, starting at one end with the heaviest objects and going right along in a continuum to the lightest. I imagine the concrete on one end will swallow up the heavier doo-dads, and on the opposite end everything will rest freely on the surface. In the middle, things will sink halfway. You see, this is my plan. This is what I'm going to accomplish, and it won't be long now.

I fancy I'll paint it somehow when it's done, and then smash it all up, box it, wrap the box with colorful paper, and drop it off the side of a bridge. 

At that point, I'll feel quite smug, as you might imagine! 

Those animals outside are really beginning to annoy me. I'd better retire to the loft and fit myself with wax lips, like I've done so many times before. In a way it's dreary, but believe it or not, it almost always works! Before I know it, I'm a million miles away. 

4

Troublesome, Unpredictable. Frank. These were among the words that Silvia had engraved on silver bracelets. Bracelets which were alternated daily on her dainty wrists. Wrists which were plastic, yet at the same time, somehow alive. 

Silvia was remarkably talented. She always had been. Her gifts varied historically, through the decades, according to her whims and fancies. The constants in her life seemed to be her naughty grin and the ever-emerging abundance of her artistry. All else varied, and varied widely. 

She had severed her arms at the elbows fairly early in her career, as part of her doctoral dissertation in Neanderthal physiology. The committee listening to her oral defense were not endowed with the presence of mind to appreciate Silvia's innovative manner of exploring issues. When she entered the room, one well-cleaned humerus tucked under an armpit, the other, bowzer-like, between her teeth, and she proceeded to tap dance while projecting slides on the wall depicting volcanic activity in Micronesia, the members of her committee were rather dense. They didn't see it as a defense at all, or even as a vague illustration of her thesis topic. She left with no degree, but she certainly left with pride. And with the lovely, bleached bones of her forearms proudly displayed.

Later she constructed her own prosthetics, a series of them, in fact, using a number of different combinations of material, function, and aesthetic design. For a while she wore battery-powered, rotating obelisks which broadcast amplified tape recordings of Canadian military personnel taking Oriental language lessons. Another pair of arms resembled snakes, elastic, green dangling things, which were actually made of licorice which she loudly and enthusiastically slurped and chewed on in different modes of public transport. Her current arms were melted down Barbie dolls, dotted with little blue eyeballs that with gravity's help, irregularly blinked beneath heavy lashes. The bracelets were just an extra touch: Ostracized; Lenient.

Silvia refused to sing for the President on her 90^th birthday, because she was absolutely certain it was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Instead, she sent a very formal, polite note of regret, stapled to the carcass of a taxidermied, featherless goose. (It had been stuffed with a special substance of her own creation, designed to gradually emit a foul stench of death and decay, and ultimately explode.)

She gorged herself on biscuits. 

Kevin Acers, Phanat Nikom, Thailand, 1995